eSOANEM wrote:Like, I know the equivalents to the sort of thing I was looking for in Spanish: mostly "take the feminine form, knock the -a off and replace with one of -@, -x, or -e" (although -@ I think is usually used primarily for people of unknown gender but presumed to be binary, -x is a bit more inclusive, and -e being a neo-ending#s pretty much exclusive to nb folks in queer spaces)

I love the -e ending so much and wish it was standard by now.

TaintedDeity wrote:Tainted Deity

suffer-cait wrote:One day I'm gun a go visit weeks and discover they're just a computer in a trashcan at an ice cream shop.

Liri wrote:↶Does anyone here make a conscious decision to use "blond" for the masculine use and "blonde" for the feminine?

I do. I also use fiancé/fiancée based on gender. I don't know what French non-binary people do though (it's obviously a lot more complicated than English usually is) so I have no idea what I'd do if I needed to describe another nb with one of those terms. I'd probably default to blonde (because that's most common) and fiancé unless the person objected.

Yeah, I make the fiancé(e) distinction. I haven't written blond(e) in so long that I'm not sure what I'd do.

With French it's probably best to just ask when referring or talking to an NB person, since it's unavoidable (esp. in writing).

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

Liri wrote:Yeah, I make the fiancé(e) distinction. I haven't written blond(e) in so long that I'm not sure what I'd do.

Same here on both counts. Though whenever I think I can get away with it, I use "betrothed" instead of "fiancé(e)", because I think it's silly to use a French word when there's a perfectly serviceable English one (yeah, I'm loads of fun at parties).

On spelling in school: My recollection is that from 1st through 4th grade, "Spelling" was one of the major subjects, alongside "Reading", "Math", "Social Studies", and so on. We were given a list of words at the beginning of each week, given some fairly mindless homework on them (like writing them in alphabetical order or, the worst, just writing them three times each), and then tested on them at the end of the week. I don't remember any specific list-based spelling or vocabulary instruction in grades 5-8 (during which years, the formerly distinct subjects of "Reading", "Language", and "Spelling" were merged into "Language Arts"), but then in 9th grade English class we were again given weekly vocabulary lists and tests (though the focus there was less on spelling and more on teaching us the meanings of words we supposedly didn't already know).

I do recall occasionally getting marked wrong for using the "wrong" spelling of a word (even outside of the spelling subject proper, and including words we hadn't officially been taught to spell) - for instance, I've always used the spelling "axe", and my 2nd grade teacher marked it off for the "e" at the end. My early Tolkien fandom also led to my getting marked wrong for using British spellings sometimes. But then, this was the same teacher who claimed that "all spheres are hollow, except for the Earth" (I'm not even really sure what she thought she meant by that).

I have a slight distinction between betrothed and fiancé(e) although in most contexts it's not relevant and the period where one is betrothed is (from an external pov at least) brief. In my brain, two people are betrothed from the point they've made an informal agreement to get married whereas being engaged (and therefore fiancé(e)) requires a formal agreement and proposal.

Tbh, I mostly have this because of my unviersity's parenting scheme (where freshers get "married" and then get given kids the next year to help get used to the university thing and, well, proposals got pretty intense and often required a lot of planning and therefore time between betrothal and engagement)

eSOANEM wrote:Like, I know the equivalents to the sort of thing I was looking for in Spanish: mostly "take the feminine form, knock the -a off and replace with one of -@, -x, or -e" (although -@ I think is usually used primarily for people of unknown gender but presumed to be binary, -x is a bit more inclusive, and -e being a neo-ending#s pretty much exclusive to nb folks in queer spaces)

I love the -e ending so much and wish it was standard by now.

It has the advantage of being easy to pronounce and sounding way more natural than the others! It is defo my favourite too but as a non-native speaker in a country with next to no Spanish-speaking population my preference isn't very relevant, glad to see there's a native speaker from an actual Spanish-speaking country who agrees

I can't help much about non-binary French people; I am yet to hear of them in French language. The French wikipedia entry on them suggests a few gender-neutral pronouns I have never seen, or alternating beween masculine and feminine pronouns, or other solutions that seem quite impractical to me (I can't imagine how you can use no pronouns at all).

It says nothing about adjectives or nouns (such as fiancé(e) or blond(e)). It would seem natural to me that such nouns and adjectives would agree on gender with the pronouns. But what happens when people use a gender-neutral pronoun that I am yet to hear or read, I wouldn't know. In many cases French defaults everything that is not certainly feminine as masculine, but that may not satisfy everyone.

How do you pronounce "violence" and "violent"? With two syllables or three syllables?

I've never used the word trypophobia before but my first thought is to pronounce it "tripe" but then my Greek nerd brain jumps in and goes for "trip" and then for something like a French "tryp" with vowel from "tu"

Grop wrote:I can't help much about non-binary French people; I am yet to hear of them in French language. The French wikipedia entry on them suggests a few gender-neutral pronouns I have never seen, or alternating beween masculine and feminine pronouns, or other solutions that seem quite impractical to me (I can't imagine how you can use no pronouns at all).

It says nothing about adjectives or nouns (such as fiancé(e) or blond(e)). It would seem natural to me that such nouns and adjectives would agree on gender with the pronouns. But what happens when people use a gender-neutral pronoun that I am yet to hear or read, I wouldn't know. In many cases French defaults everything that is not certainly feminine as masculine, but that may not satisfy everyone.

Yeah, French is definitely one of the hardest languages to do this in that I know of (although I've heard that Hebrew is worse because it verbs conjugate for gender and, from there so do a bunch of common greetings/farewells). I think I'd heard of "yle" before (which would essentially be the same as "ille" just spelt differently) but the pronoun only gets you half way to properly not misgendering people. :/

Also, it is possible (in English at least, French's clitic pronouns might make it harder) to avoid using pronouns full stop but it does take practice and can still sometimes be tricky

It’s especially hard with possessive pronouns. One can avoid he/she and him/her by repeating the name, but “Toni lost Toni‘s gloves” and “Storm washes Storm’s hands” gets really awkward. There French is great: son/sa means both his and her.

I've noticed something in a few video essays about cinema recently which is people pronouncing "noir" (as in "film noir") with two syllables as /nʊ'a:r/ rather than the /nwa:r/ I'd thought I'd always heard before (and as wiktionary claims is the norm both this side of the pond and in the US). Anyone notice this before or know where it might be associated with?

eSOANEM wrote:I've noticed something in a few video essays about cinema recently which is people pronouncing "noir" (as in "film noir") with two syllables as /nʊ'a:r/ rather than the /nwa:r/ I'd thought I'd always heard before (and as wiktionary claims is the norm both this side of the pond and in the US). Anyone notice this before or know where it might be associated with?

I don't think there are any common English words with the /nw/ cluster in the initial position, and when it's in the middle of the word, you tend to have a stop between the n and w. It can be genuinely difficult to pronounce.

eSOANEM wrote:I've noticed something in a few video essays about cinema recently which is people pronouncing "noir" (as in "film noir") with two syllables as /nʊ'a:r/ rather than the /nwa:r/ I'd thought I'd always heard before (and as wiktionary claims is the norm both this side of the pond and in the US). Anyone notice this before or know where it might be associated with?

Are you sure it's /ʊ/? I don't think /ʊ/ usually occurs at the end of a syllable/before a vowel; I pronounce it /no.ˈɑɹ/ ("no R"), and I think this is the pronunciation I've heard from others (US). Not sure if I've even heard /nwɑɹ/, though the pronunciations are similar enough that I might just not have noticed.

It might be /nʊ'wa:r/ instead? It definitely seems closer to [u] than [o].

I did struggle to find any other words with an initial /nw/ (and all medial examples I can find out a syllable break between the two consonants). I guess it's a case of adapting a loanword to English phonotactics. It seems odd though that people making a living talking about film are the ones I noticed using the anglicised pronunciation (seeing as that's usually considered a marker for 'uneducated' speech) unless it's just really widespread and I'm getting Bader-Meinhoffed by it

I don't recall ever hearing "noir" pronounced as two syllables. But usually I'm fixated on the /ɹ/ (which always sounds wrong to me - /nwɑ/ sounds much closer to French /nwaʁ/ to my ears), so maybe I just haven't noticed the two syllable thing.

eSOANEM wrote:I did struggle to find any other words with an initial /nw/ (and all medial examples I can find out a syllable break between the two consonants). I guess it's a case of adapting a loanword to English phonotactics. It seems odd though that people making a living talking about film are the ones I noticed using the anglicised pronunciation (seeing as that's usually considered a marker for 'uneducated' speech) unless it's just really widespread and I'm getting Bader-Meinhoffed by it

It may make sense that the people who are using that word the most would be the ones changing the way it is pronunced.

flicky1991 wrote:How many syllables does "vehicle" have for people? I have two, first syllable rhyming with "deer" (couldn't find a rhyme for the first syllable that would work for rhotic speakers...).

Three. Semi-related, I just noticed your location.

What about "tambourine"? Do some British accents hit it with the "borough" filter and make it "tam-breen"?

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

I have /ˈvɪə.kəl/ in normal speech, but in slow, careful speech I have /ˈviː.ɪ.kəl (so two syllables normally, three in slow, careful speech). For tambourine I usually have three syllables /ˌtæm.bəˈɹiːn/ but in very rapid speech have two syllables /tæmˈbɹiːn/. So in both cases I have two syllables in the fastest speech and three in the slowest, but vehicle is two syllables more often, probably because it's a more common word.

flicky1991 wrote:How many syllables does "vehicle" have for people? I have two, first syllable rhyming with "deer" (couldn't find a rhyme for the first syllable that would work for rhotic speakers...).

I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced with two syllables. I say /'vi.ɪ.kʊl/, and the only significant variation I hear very often is the voicing of the /h/.

A discussion on Reddit brought up how Americans pronounce /ɛɡ/, as in "egg". A number of Americans pronounce this as /eɪɡ/, such that "egg" and "plague" rhyme. I've heard this pronunciations not infrequently, but I can't find anything about it on Wikipedia. Does anyone have any more information on it? Such as where it is common, if it's part of a larger vowel change, etc.?

flicky1991 wrote:I've heard of Americans having the opposite change in "Craig", so that "Craig" and "egg" rhyme (but don't rhyme with "plague").

So this actually started with a discussion of "Craig". I think in the US the standard pronunciation of Craig is /krɛg/, but this isn't a general sound change, it's just for "Craig". But then for some people /ɛg/ becomes /eɪg/, which coincidentally makes their pronunciation of "Craig" the same as the British pronunciation. But being a Reddit thread where most people don't know much about linguistics, there was a lot of confusion over whether "Craig" rhymes with "egg", "plague", or both.

/krɛg/ is definitely the most common pronunciation of "Craig" in America, but I'm not sure the /kreig/ pronunciation of "Craig" always coincides with the /eig/ pronunciation of "egg". I think the prounciation of "egg" is uniquely shifted in some dialects, similarly to how some people shift the vowel in "milk" but not "silk."

Has anyone heard the pronunciation of the prefix "un-" as /ɒn/? I know someone from Michigan who will pronounce words like "undo" as /ɒnduː/, which I find very strange. He does that to some other u's as well, but not all of them.

Californian here, to me Craig rhymes with plague and not egg, while egg rhymes with Greg. Craig-ground would rhyme with playground (or plague-ground), while egg-ground would not.

ETA: After discussing this with my girlfriend I learned that for some people like her Greg ALSO has the long-A sound, so the above may not be clear. I can't type IPA on this device, but to me Craig has an 'ay' sound, while egg and Greg have and 'eh' sound.

For me, Craig, plague, egg, Greg, beg are all /-eɪɡ/; I'm not sure /-ɛɡ/ is a possible combination in my idiolect. (Also length is /leɪŋθ/.) Bag, sag, etc. don't quite rhyme with egg etc., but there was a point in my life when I thought they rhymed (meaning I would have considered bag and beg homophones), and they don't have the same /æ/ sound as words that don't end in g.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

Not sure if I've already brought it up, but the use of the interpunct instead of a period (fullstop) as a decimal point in the U.K. surprised me. I was already aware that the U.K. used to use the long system for naming large numbers rather (in which a "billion" is a million squared, a "trillion" is a million cubed, etc.) than the now predominate short system, but I wasn't aware of other subtle differences in writing math (or maths).

The channel numberphile also showed me that in some cases, multiplication is represented by a baseline dot, making this the exact opposite of American usage. Is this at all common? I have never seen it in other places. I wonder how they notate scalar products of vectors.

To be clear what I mean, an older British person (or apparently people from other places, such as Matt Parker from Australia) might write "three point five times two equals seven" as 3·5.2=7, whereas an American would invariably write 3.5·2=7 (unless either was using a different multiplication symbol like × or *). The use of the centered dot as a decimal price appears to be especially common in prices, so for instance a ticket that costs "nineteen pounds ninety nine" might be written or printed as £9·99. Again, is this common in the U.K. (or even standard), or is it just a niche usage or holdover? Is it common in Australia?

The other thing that for whatever reason I found irritating was the way the italic x was written. I would normally write this in two strokes, the first from the top left to the bottom right (probably curved at both ends toward the horizontal, resembling a logistic curve, or curved slightly past that), followed by a straight stroke from the bottom left to the top right, like this. (Arrows indicate direction of stroke.)

Spoiler:

But apparently in the U.K. and Austrlia, it is common to write it in two curved strokes that resemble congruent semicircles tangent at their midpoints, like this.

Spoiler:

There were other differences too, like integral symbols slanted very heavily , but these were the most obvious and the only ones I saw from multiple people from multiple countries. I'm curious to hear what experiences you guys had learning these in school or using or seeing them since then.

Huh, I never realized that in the UK, but a Google image search for ticket UK brings up several tickets with a dot in the middle between pounds and pence. I guess I always assumed their printer was slightly broken or something. Is this from the time when a pound was not broken into 100 pence but some non-decimal unit?

I'm sure I don't know. Wikipedia, as usual, gives slightly different answers depending on which article you read, but the references it gives are interesting. For instance, it accurately cites The Lancet as still mandating the centered dot as a decimal point, even though a quick look at its articles makes it clear that this use is certainly not common, let alone standard. (Incidentally, use of a dot rather than a comma as the decimal character is universal in that publication, so it is not solely a localization issue.) It also points out that immediately after decimalization, in 1971, the government (crown? state?) specifically advocated the centered dot for separating pounds and pence, allowing the baseline dot only when required by printing limitations.

Obviously a style guideline from 1971 isn't going to matter much to people today, 46 years later, but it does give some insight into how British people thought about these characters back at that time, and the fact that some comparatively young (40s I think) people online continue to use it out of habit suggests this was not just a last gasp. It is pretty jarring though. When I first saw it, I thought it was just a mistake, especially the baseline dot for multiplication.

P.S. The SI, being a standards organization, is more strict in its recommendations, and that is probably what we're seeing in scientific articles. Multiplication uses the centered dot or multiplication sign ×, digit separation is done by spaces every three digits, if at all (width of space depending on a variety of factors), and the decimal character is a baseline dot or comma. Since English dominates academic writing, I guess the period is basically becoming universal in that sphere. I think America sort of crowded out British usage here.